Egg Island Lighthouse

Part of the Lost Lighthouses of New Jersey Series

On the afternoon of August 20, 1950, oystermen working the waters of the
upper Delaware Bay looked toward Egg Island and saw flames reaching toward
the sky. The old wood-frame Egg Island Lighthouse was on fire, and in little
more than half an hour, nothing remained but smoldering embers. The blaze obliterated
a historic landmark beloved by generations of local watermen. Built in about
1877, the two-story wooden structure had a small lantern on its roof. Abandoned
in 1935, after a small iron-skeleton tower was placed nearby, the building
quickly became ramshackled. Fishermen occasionally used the old residence
as a shelter and may have brought on its destruction by building a fire
to warm themselves and dry their clothes on a rainy day. No doubt its dry
timbers burned like matchwood.